States of Being: Leadership Coaching for Equitable Schools

By Linda Belans

• Language: English
• Publisher: Circle the Moon Press
• Release date: May 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734559217

Linda Belans

Linda Belans, Ed.D. has been coaching educational and corporate leaders for more than 30 years. She began her lifelong equity work, activism, and organizing in Oakland, California, in 1968. She is the recipient of many awards and honors for journalism, poetry, and dance, and is the founding host of The State of Things on public radio. She lives in Durham, NC.

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Foreword

Donnell, man, you’re not the same Donnell anymore, what happened? A former teacher said these words to me in eighth grade when we ran into each other at the second-floor printer. He said it casually, kindly, but with slight amazement. He certainly meant it as a compliment, and at the time I probably took it as one.

Looking back at this moment now, however, I see a more fraught reality. There is an expectation of failure that surrounds young men of color in education, especially in high-poverty schools. We enter a system where being disciplined is the norm, a system that lays the groundwork for either future incarceration or a future life of oppression and low expectations. Success is the aberration. The assumption is that in order to succeed, or even to avoid punishment, we have to change who we fundamentally are: You’re not the same Donnell. My teacher’s offhand comment inadvertently affirms this dangerous way of thinking and demonstrates why Dr. Linda Belans’s States of Being work is, in the words of Stephen Covey, not just merely important but wildly important.

In one sense, the teacher was right; I wasn’t the same Donnell. When I had been in his class just a year earlier, I had spent most of my time in suspension or on the bench (as one form of discipline was called). When we met at the printer, I had begun winning leadership awards, and the suspensions were almost entirely behind me. In reality, however, I was the same Donnell I had always been. Only now, there had been a crucial shift in my circumstances that changed both how others saw me and how I saw my own potential. That shift came in the form of a mentor who began coaching to my assets. He saw my higher self and asked me to do the same. Jared Lamb was my math teacher, my track coach, and the school leader, and unbeknownst to me, he was being coached by Dr. B in the States of Being.

Addressing behavior with constant discipline and punishments is deficits-based training. It’s probably the most pervasive and least effective style of education and training many students encounter. I was stuck in this rut of deficits and discipline until I met Jared. However, had Jared focused solely on helping me change my behavior in order to avoid suspension, that might have been effective in the short term, but such a narrow, results-oriented focus could never have been transformational in the way that Dr. B’s assets-based coaching is.

One incident, in particular, stands out when I consider how Jared helped me see my higher self. My behavior had landed me in Saturday school detention. As I was sitting in the classroom I began to internalize the environment and what it meant to be there. I felt horrible because I had to wear an embarrassing t-shirt that publicly shamed me for the, in my opinion, small talking disruption I made in class. After sitting in detention for a few hours I wrote the words I hate myself on my t-shirt. When Jared, who was on Saturday detention duty, came by and noticed the words on my shirt, he was shocked and I think, to a degree, hurt, because it was not the way he saw me.

He motioned for me to follow him into a nearby classroom and asked why I had written those words. After I replied, we just sat there for a moment, then he asked me to go to the whiteboard and pick up a marker. He told me to list all the positive and good character traits I saw in myself. At first, I thought this was a pointless exercise, but with Jared’s encouragement, I began to write things like integrity, leader, optimistic. He had me write my strengths from left to right until the entire whiteboard was filled. It was exhausting. Afterwards we both sat back and began to read them aloud, reinforcing the activity and laughing at some. I didn’t know it at the time but this was an activity that pulled out my higher self. I could see a lot of these things in myself. I just had to name them. I had to learn to recognize them and nurture them.

Was this the defining big moment that changed the path of my school career? I’m not sure. But I know it was part of the process, and I know it was my last time in Saturday detention. I had a new perception of myself, because I knew I had to live by the character traits I wrote on the board. I trusted and knew that Jared Lamb would hold me accountable to them, and that there would now be no excuses not to live up to them, not to honor them.

About the same time, another crucial mentor came into my life. Linda Belans, then Director of the KIPP Leadership Coaching Program, came to my social studies class as part of a site visit. I was the classroom ambassador, which meant I was the student who greeted her and explained what we were studying. During this brief exchange, she asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was 14, and it was the first time anyone in a school had ever seriously asked me this question. Imagine going from kindergarten through eighth grade without being asked this fundamental question, without being asked to consider a future. I remember this because it was the first time I had ever given an answer.

I said, President of the United States. In my mind this was the vision that I had back then; I was taking the long view. Plus, it was 2008, and Barack Obama had shown that a Black man could run for president. The idea of the long view is a crucial part of Dr. B’s work, and that question by definition takes a long view—it’s an assets-based question—what do you want to be when you grow up? It sounds like such a simple, ordinary question, and for many children in this country it is. Indeed, it’s such a common question for these children that after a few years of eliciting dreams, the query becomes boring and even eye-roll inducing for young students. What do you want to be when you grow up? implies a world of possibilities, an access to privileges, networks, and opportunities that is casual and simply taken for granted by many young students in this country. But there are too many other children who rarely hear this question, children who stand, virtually unseen, outside that normal world of access. They are trapped in a corrupt educational system defined by racial segregation, wealth inequality, and poverty-structured neighborhoods. They are not asked to consider a future of accomplishment and privilege.

Dr. B understood the empowering nature of her question even before I did. She was inviting me to imagine a world where I had access. I realized I wanted those possibilities. A chance meeting with her in the streets of New Orleans later that evening solidified the invitation. She gave me her card and told me to follow up. I believed her invitation was genuine, so I did follow up, and she has been a coach, mentor, and dear friend ever since.

The assets-based States of Being mentoring that I received from Jared and Dr. B changed the trajectory of my life. I went on to become middle-school council president and won the class’s leadership award. I earned admission to an elite private high school, where I was suddenly thrust into a world of privilege and entitlement for the first time in my life, but I held fast to my coaching and became class president my first year there. After high school, I became the first member of my family to attend college and was the first Black student elected president of the student body at Franklin & Marshall College. I interned for U.S. Representative Joseph Cao, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, and in the Obama White House. I was also asked to join the KIPP New Orleans Board of Directors and am the youngest board member and first alumnus ever to serve. Now, I am Executive Assistant to the Vice President of Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions at Tulane University, a Tier 1 research university in my hometown, and where I have just been accepted into the inaugural class of the Master of Public Administration program.

Having gone from school suspension to school board, I know first hand why we must bring assets- and equity-based coaching to every student in every school. The work of equity requires us to take the long view. It’s shortsighted to focus only on immediate results, such as fewer disciplinary problems or higher test scores. We need transformational change—institutionally and individually. We need teachers who can connect students to their higher selves, and we need school leaders who can do the same for the teachers. We need an educational system that fosters a sense of belonging in our students so that, no matter what their background, they can envision themselves in positions of privilege, leadership, and power.

For students stuck in systems that reinforce racial segregation and poverty, the lack of access and belonging cannot be overstated. With hindsight, I can see that many of the qualities and impulses that landed me in suspension are the same traits I call on now as a leader. When I felt insecure or out of place as a young student, I’d try to create camaraderie by making jokes or talking (in the halls, in class, in places where my contributions were deemed disruptive). I know now I was trying to find commonalities so I could belong. By seeing my higher self, Jared helped me understand that my desire to create a sense of belonging extended beyond myself and that I could channel my disruptions into leadership. Dr. B’s coaching helped me identify my values. What’s clearer to me now (one of her favorite wrap-up questions) is that I want to create an inclusive, educational, and safe environment conducive for young people to develop into their full selves and thrive.

Recently, I had the opportunity to mentor a group of young students in much the same way that Dr. B has always done for me. It was Campus Preview Day at Tulane, and I noticed a Black mother and three of her children who looked like they needed some direction. I asked if I could help, and serendipitously they were looking for the chemistry lab, which was where I was headed for the open house portion of the day. We walked into the huge classroom together, and I told them to feel free to look around as long as they liked. I had learned on the walk over that two of the woman’s three children were high school seniors and excellent students, and the third was not yet in high school.

Almost as soon as we walked into the classroom, I could sense a major disconnect. They were in a classroom with no explanation of why, and what they were seeing was just what was in front of them: lab stations, glass bottles, funky chemistry equations written on the boards, but nothing to help personalize this sterile environment. I could see they were becoming disengaged. I could see the wheels spinning in their heads that this all seemed kind of pointless. It was at that moment that I spotted a couple of white lab coats, and the light bulb went off in my head. Hey, I called out, want to try on some lab coats?! One by one I got them fitted. In the coats, their energy changed. They were excited. When the young Black man tried his coat on, it fit him like it was his coat. He nodded his head and said, Yeah, this does look good on me. When we went back into the lab section of the classroom, there was a difference, a huge difference. Their eyes lit up; they were engaging with the classroom: They put on pairs of orange gloves, picked up and examined the beakers, and posed for pictures. Now, they could envision themselves being in a chemistry class at a prestigious and highly selective university.

In many ways the writing of the traits on the board and the putting on of lab coats isn’t so different. Both seek to open a world of possibilities that a deficits-based framework had made seem impossible. When we operate from an assets-based framework, we are able to see the talents and gifts our students have to offer. And to be clear, this spark exists in each of our students. We have to be part of creating a place of belonging that will allow them to be fearless and vulnerable in order to become their best selves. Whether a student is at an elite private school or a low-income public school, what makes the difference is whether a student is consistently viewed through a lens of deficits or whether the student is given a chance each day to get it right. That is why it’s so critical to see the States of Being as a model that can be applied across systems, not just in individual schools or by certain school leaders. The focus should be on ensuring that our whole K–12 educational system—charter, public, or private—is providing an equitable education to all children and delivering on best outcomes for their lives.

I often feel that Dr. B has genuinely been in my life for no other reason than to see me become my best self. I say this first because as I continue to grow into adulthood and leadership, I’m learning just how very rare this is—when someone is invested in you for you, not for her own return on investment. I had absolutely no idea who I was meeting when I met Dr. B, nor did I know we would keep in touch for so long. I’ve learned so much from her in big moments and in small lessons around leadership, guiding principles, research and data, and voice. At every turn she has helped me to become a better version of myself by teaching me the power of story, narrative, and identity. When we first met